Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Critical Pedagogy For Music Education: Preparing Future Teachers, Kelly Bylica

Teaching Innovation Projects

This introductory workshop will focus on using critical questioning techniques to encourage education students to think through different lenses when approaching education methods and pedagogy. Undergraduate education students, particularly music education students, often enter university with a desire to replicate an educational experience, program, or teacher they had as an elementary or secondary school student. The use of critical questioning will help students think outside this narrow box of experience and create space to consider in what ways we may be complicit in perpetuating norms that may not be inclusive of all students. Research indicates that the use of critical ...

The Flow Of History Along Ridley Creek, Walter Cressler

University Libraries Faculty Publications

Ridley Creek flows southeast for 24 miles from the South Valley Hills of southern Chester County through Delaware County, Pennsylvania, where it enters the Delaware River between the City of Chester and the Borough of Eddystone. Ridley Creek and its tributaries flow within a narrow 38 square mile watershed that includes parts of eleven townships, five boroughs, and one city. This illustrated story highlights many of the natural and cultural features of the Ridley Creek watershed, from its sources to where the creek finally meets the waters of the Delaware River.

Theatre For Social Change: Histories & Applications, Samantha J. Hageman

Theater Summer Fellows

Theater is not only an art form, but also a method of communication and community-building. My research investigates how theater can be used to create social change. I study approaches to using theater as a vehicle for social change and a tool to communicate diverse perspectives and cultivate empathy. My work focuses on a history of theater for social change, examples of theater for social change including plays and performance pieces, and ways of both creating and teaching theater for social change. My project culminates in an annotated bibliography, a research paper, an original theater for social change monologue, and ...

War For The Planet Of The Apes (Movie Review), Joshua Matthews

Faculty Work: Comprehensive List

"This movie asks us to side with the apes, to root against the human army that they face, and to feel elated at the prospect of a planet full of sentient apes, without sentient humans."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­a review of the movie War for the Planet of the Apes from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

http://inallthings.org/war-for-the-planet-of-the-apes/

Close Enough: Adventures In Fact-Checking, Ramona Wynne Denies

Dissertations and Theses

These days, fact-checking is a fashionable term in the worlds of both politics and the media. On broadcast news, tickers run below the speeches of politicians, with claims annotated in real-time and occasionally labeled as false. In newspapers like the Washington Post and online information hubs like Politifact.com, writers invoke the term to flag reporting that aims to correct or clarify the public record. At times, "fact-checking" efforts are themselves called out for partisan bias or personal gain. The term is now practically mainstream, used in everyday conversation to indicate disbelief. ("I'm going to have to fact-check you ...

The Flow Of History Along Ridley Creek, Walter Cressler

Walt Cressler

Functionalism And Artificial Intelligence, Kevin Connor

Episteme

The Chinese Room argument shows that the Turing test functions only by syntax, thereby revealing that the notion of meaning is not properly accounted for by the test. Thus, Searle is convincing in his refutation of the Turing test for strong artificial intelligence. Yet, while the mind is not like a program running on certain hardware, the brain is. But thinking, Searle’s real interest, is not simply running the appropriate program! Therefore, rather than providing a solution to the Mind-Body problem, Searle’s conclusion about AI begs the question about what causes semantics. Searle’s logic goes awry somewhere ...

The Ghost In The Machine: A Defense Of The Possibility Of Artificial Intelligence, Matthew Carlson

Episteme

The Chinese Room argument shows that the Turing test functions only by syntax, thereby revealing that the notion of meaning is not properly accounted for by the test. Thus, Searle is convincing in his refutation of the Turing test for strong artificial intelligence. Yet, while the mind is not like a program running on certain hardware, the brain is. But thinking, Searle’s real interest, is not simply running the appropriate program! Therefore, rather than providing a solution to the Mind-Body problem, Searle’s conclusion about AI begs the question about what causes semantics. Searle’s logic goes awry somewhere ...

Afraid Of The Dark: Nagel And Rationalizing The Fear Of Death, Jennifer Lunsford

Episteme

What should be said about the Thomas Nagel/O. H. Green interpretation of why people fear death? Since Nagel focuses only on the non-state of death (ignoring the state of dying), he concludes that it is the deprivation of life that people fear. Green, who shares with Nagel similar organizing thoughts, argues that a fear of loss of life is equivalent to the fear of death, since people really fear not living (any) longer. But this paper’s author sees more logic to Nagel’s position. But is Nagel correct? Has Nagel’s article on death wrongly brushed aside the ...

Kant's Proof Of A Universal Principle Of Causality: A Transcendental Idealist's Reply To Hume, Reza Mahmoodshahi

Episteme

In the Second Analogy of the Critique of Pure Reason, is Kant directly responding to Hume? The author argues that he must be, otherwise his arguments about succession and irreversibility (the house and the ship) fall victim to P. F. Strawson’s “non sequitur” criticism. Kant believes that our experience of successive objective events presupposes the application of the causal category, obviously a crucial part of Kant’s notion of the understanding. So long as we keep in mind that Kant depends strongly on his underlying doctrine of transcendental idealism, the author grants Lewis White Beck’s defense of Kant ...

Meeting Her, Liz Moss

Staff Work

"I wonder if we would take more time to notice God’s presence if the crazy, unknowns would be filled with peace and assurance."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­a mother's difficult decision from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

http://inallthings.org/meeting-her-2/

Standing Committee Meeting Minutes, 1963-2009, Faculty Senate.

University Archives Finding Aids

No abstract provided.

Investigating Female Indigenous Leadership In Latin America, Roseangela G. Hartford

Spanish Summer Fellows

This project investigates gender constructs and the complex assigned gender roles in settings of female indigenous leadership in Latin America. It examines two distinct indigenous communities, including the BriBri society in Yorkín, Costa Rica and the Maya peoples in Santa Anita, Guatemala that demonstrate the circumstantial spectrum in which women can obtain leadership roles and what actors directly influence this process. Each case study explores the fluidity of gender identities in which concepts of masculinity often guide female empowerment and liberation. With Costa Rica abolishing their military in 1948 and Guatemala experiencing a 36-year civil war (1960-1996) and a major ...

Theater For Social Justice: Sexual Violence Prevention Programming For College Campuses, Jessica Childs

Theater Summer Fellows

My research investigates intersections of theater for social justice, the college campus sexual assault epidemic, and programs for sexual assault prevention. Using this research as a foundation, I have created a proposal for Ursinus College’s sexual assault prevention program. This proposal is informed by the 2011 “Dear Colleague Letter” on sexual violence, the White House “It’s On Us” campaign, and successful theater-based sexual violence prevention programs. My proposal focuses on the definition of consent, bystander intervention, healthy relationships, relationship abuse, sexual expression, and safer sex practices. The proposal demonstrates the ways in which student-written monologues and short scenes ...

Faith And Allegiance, Benjamin J. Lappenga

Faculty Work: Comprehensive List

"I’d like to devote attention to some ways these books address biblical and theological topics that animated the Reformation debates and continue to garner interest today."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­two book reviews from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

http://inallthings.org/faith-and-allegiance/

Beyond Strunk & White: Using Comics To Teach Students To Write Analytically, Lisa Smith

Lisa Smith

Behavior And Other Minds: A Response To Functionalists, Michael Lockhart

Episteme

Functionalism’s metaphysics is wrongly thought to answer the epistemological question of the existence of the other’s mentality. Contra Elliot Reed, the practical utility of being able to solve the problem of other minds does not make functionalism the best theory of mind, nor does it actually solve the problem of other minds. Reed’s circular argument implicitly relies on abstract behaviorism and the need to solve the problem of other minds. What must come first, however, is a correct ontology of the mind. Functionalism struggles with intentionality, disregards qualia, and, according to Searle’s excellent thought experiments, is ...

Religious Experience, Pluralistic Knowledge And William James, Brittany G. Trice

Episteme

This article explores the qualities and nature of the “religious” or mystical experience according to James and pragmatic philosophy in general. The author initially provides an overview of James’ philosophy of religion, which includes his pragmatic commitments, understanding of experience, and emphasis on cognitive relations. Then there arises a question: How can I know that others have mystical experience, too? James’s push to make the mystical experience scientific misjudges the utility of his quasi-chaos idea, which can be shown to support inter-subjective knowledge and position religion within what the author deems “pluralistic knowledge.” In the end, Rorty and Bruce ...

What Is 'Natural' About Natural Science: Philosophical Naturalism In The Evolution Debate, Hya P. Winham

Episteme

Creationist Phillip E. Johnson argues that evolution theory is a product of a bias toward naturalistic explanation—a materialist philosophical ideology that encroaches on empirical science. This position even got some support from philosopher Michael Ruse. But the fact is science must include a base level of presupposition; the creationist, while supplying her own, mistakenly thinks that science can operate without such an explanatory guide. This paper defends naturalism in science, thereby rejecting the concerns and arguments of neo-creationists. In this effort, the author argues why naturalism is important to science, uses Dewey to explain why anti-naturalism leads to careless ...

Desertification And Metaphysics In Nietzsche And Abbey, David Allen Chenault

Episteme

The truth is neither simply culture derived from nature, nor nature from culture. Can we (qua humans) merge with nature and still maintain our self-intelligibility? –This is the question that the anti-anti-naturalist concentrates on. The author looks at Nietzsche’s critique of metaphysics, which posits a new metaphysics that requires us to enter the violent, heartless desert that is the paradoxical dual immanence of nature. The paper looks at the desert in the Genealogy’s discussion of the ascetic ideal, and how it relates to Edward Abbey’s isolation and book Desert Solitaire. Importantly, the similarities in-part stem from their ...